Ryan Preece won the series title in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. He has 25 wins in the series, three of them coming last season. The photo was taken byJared C. Tilton.
The images are from the same company.
Ryan Preece didn't just show up overnight. In 2007, the Connecticut native began his climb towards the highest level of professional stock car racing. He won the series title in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. He has 25 wins in the series, three of them coming last season.
He was signed to replace A. J. Allmendinger at JTG Daugherty Racing. He added a ride in the Xfinity series with JR Motorsports to his schedule.
His best finish was third at the spring Talladega race. A charter helped Preece and JTG.
NASCAR's charters were recently extended until at least 2024. Teams that own a Charters are guaranteed a starting spot in the Cup series and the money that comes with that, at every race. Four open spots are available to no-Chartered teams because of the limited Cup series fields. If a team with a Charter finishes in the bottom three of the owner's points in three consecutive years, NASCAR can remove the Charter.
Charter owners can sell or lease their Charter to another team once in five years. With all the money that can be had, owners are selling their charters for millions of dollars.
Ryan Preece won the Nascar Whelen Modified championship at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut. Preece won the Whelen Modified Series title. The photo was taken byDarren McCollester/NASCAR.
The NASCAR via Getty Images.
Preece would take over the No. 37 car in the fall of 2019. The Charter was leased to Roush Fenway Racing and then sold to Team Penske. Ford.
The No. 37 of Preece became the only full-time non-Chartered team and only had enough sponsorship for 24 of 36 races because they had no Charter. Preece was informed by the JTG that they would be shutting down the No. 37 team, leaving only Ricky Stenhouse Jr. as their lone fulltime driver.
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Preece said, "Not knowing where you're going to be in six months or a year can kind of weigh on you." It needed to be something that I felt like I could win and that I had the resources to do that.
That opportunity came from an unlikely place, and it's unusual in the world of NASCAR.
Reserve drivers have been in Formula 1 for a long time. When a Formula 1 team announces who their reserve driver will be, it is usually a big deal. The reserve driver on a Formula 1 team still gets some attention even though they only turn a few laps in practice.
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Preece is a reserve driver for Stewart-Haas Racing. It's not something that's common in NASCAR. The role of the reserve driver has never been defined. There have been test drivers throughout the years as teams have entered cars for a single race.
Greg Sacks was in a research and development car for the Firecracker 400 at Daytona in 1985 and Bobby Allison was in the driver's seat. Sacks would go on to win the race. Gary Nelson, crew chief for the team at the time, later admitted that the car might have had a bigger engine that was not allowed.
Neil Bonnett drove the R&D car in the final race of the season at Atlanta. It was something they had done for a long time, but many felt the only reason it was done was to help Dale Earnhardt win the 1993 Cup title. The conspiracy theory was added after Bonnett retired from the race. Earnhardt won the title without help from Bonnett, who dropped out of the field with nine other cars, guaranteeing a finish better than 34th.
Alex Bowman parted ways with Tommy Baldwin Racing at the end of 2015 and went into a reserve role at Hendrick.
Preece is now in the world of NASACR reserve driver. It is an opportunity that checks all the boxes he was looking for when he was looking for his next job.
Greg Sacks won the Firecracker 400 at Daytona International Speedway in July of 1985 to win his only career NASCAR Cup. The photo was taken by the ISC Images & Archives.
The archives of the CQ-Roll Call Group.
Preece said that he was approached by different opportunities, but it wasn't necessarily the opportunity that he was looking for. It's something that definitely intrigues me, when this was approached to me.
Preece will work for Stewart-Hass and will be entered in several races across the Cup, Xfinity, and Truck series with Rick Ware Racing, which has a technical alliance with SHR and David Gilliland Racing in the truck series.
Preece thinks the deal is a win for the team. Preece will be able to learn from all the drivers and former drivers on the team, including three-time Cup champion and team co-owner Tony Stewart. Preece wants to make sure his contributions to the team are worth something.
He said that it is not like it was 20 years ago when drivers were getting test time or testing at the track. If they weren't racing on a weekend, they would be at some racetrack testing, developing and making cars better. That's not a thing that happened in the past.
It's different because I've only been able to go and test three times in my national series career. It's important to make sure that the data that you bring in and correlate and run on the sim matches up, so that you can trust it.
Preece understands that other drivers might find it odd that he didn't take a fulltime role with a team, even if that would have meant moving down to a lower tier series.
If someone says to me, "Hey, you're going to go to the racetrack and have an opportunity to win maybe once or twice out of 33 races", or "Hey, you're going to have 12 races throughout the season, but you", I'm not
Preece will be providing data for one of the drivers for Stewart-Haas Racing. Preece had a relationship with Harvick before he became the team's reserve driver. Preece has been managed by KHI since the beginning of the year. Preece says that it wasn't Harvick who approached him about joining Stewart-Hass.
Ryan Preece, driver of the #37 Slim Jim Chevrolet, and Kevin Harvick, driver of the #4 Busch Light Ford, walk the grid prior to the NASCAR Cup Series Dixie Vodka 400 at Homestead-Miami. The photo was taken by Sean Gardner.
The images are from the same company.
He said that it was just something that came about over the last month or so. It's new. I go to Kevin for guidance and I run things by him.
Kevin has been doing this for over 20 years and has seen things and done things that I have yet to experience. I think it's important to ask him what he thinks about a certain situation. Just make my decision from there. This was something that I felt was going to fit in with my experience in racing from the past to this day.
The team and Rick Ware Racing said that Preece will be entered in several more Cup races with Rick Ware this season starting with the L.A. Coliseum exhibition race on February 6. Greg Zipadelli, vice president of competition at SHR, said that Preece will be able to help the team in several ways, including the first race for the newly-minted reserve driver.
Zipadelli said that the added insights and time in the simulator would make them better by allowing them to learn faster. We are still dealing with Covid. We all want it to be over, but it isn't. We needed a more robust plan in the event that one of our drivers got injured. We have that with Ryan.
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. was injured, Alex was called upon by the team. After Earnhardt retired, Jeff Gordon would be named the cars fulltime driver. The number 48 was moved to retire Cup champion Jimmie Johnson.
The exhibition race in L.A. is a million-dollar gamble.
Preece is in the same situation at Stewart-Haas. Aric Almirola will be retiring at the end of the season after only a few days with the team. There is a seat open in the Stewart-Haas No. 10. Preece said his focus is on proving himself.
Preece said that winning races is what he can do as a race car driver. Winning is a huge part of the sport. If I'm able to win those races, be a top contender, and be a great teammate, it will give me an opportunity to be in that conversation.
I'm not going to say that that's the case because that's not the case. I have to work hard.
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